The "Who is running?" tea leaves thread

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George Pataki allegedly thinking (again) about running for president:

http://pagesix.com/2014/09/29/george-pataki-mulls-2016-bid-meets-with-david-koch/

Pataki's presidential ambitions are the strangest thing. He hasn't held office in nearly a decade, he's not well-known nationally, he's not much of a power within the Republican Party (even at the state level, he's almost invisible), and he's not running as an ideologue or to sell books (at least I don't think he is - he's not much of a personality, and  I have to imagine that consulting would be more lucrative for any former NY Governor).

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Gary Johnson says that he wants to run again, as a Libertarian, in an interview with Newsmax (groan):

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The Atlantic runs a profile of O'Malley, who, at his most exciting, speaks as if his candidacy were a conscious parody of campaign trail banality:

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How much credence is there to the idea that speaking engagements are often a way of getting around campaign finance laws? That could have something to do with it, although it's not as if she needs to announce before spring.

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How much credence is there to the idea that speaking engagements are often a way of getting around campaign finance laws? That could have something to do with it, although it's not as if she needs to announce before spring.

At the rate of 14 delivered or scheduled so far over the past year or so, at $250,000 per speech, that amounts to $3.5 million total - in contrast, in 2007 she was raising north of $20 million per quarter. From a financial standpoint her best bet would be to announce as early as possible so she would have the most fundraising quarters under her belt as possible.

It came out just last week that UCLA paid Clinton $300k to speak - and that was, according to UCLA staff, the "special university rate."